1.

The National – Sleep Well Beast

Two weeks since it’s release, Sleep Well Beast is developing into The National’s most interesting and rewarding album yet, with a sense of reinvigoration in their template and songcraft that embraces their core characteristics while adding new digital textures. Matt Berninger’s lyrics about his relationship with his wife (who co-wrote the words) goes deep and real, while musically, they do things with the indie-rock template that feels fresh (Bryan Devendorf’s drumming adds so much too).

2.

Mount Kimbie – Love What Survives

Moving away from post-dubstep sound that they made their name with, Mount Kimbie’s third album delves into electronic 80s-inspired post-punk territory, with guests Micachu, King Krule and James Blake adding new shades to an album that sounds inspired by Broadcast and krautrock. There are depths in these layered songs to revel in.

3.

Bicep – Bicep

A belated shout out for the Belfast house music duo’s debut full-length which after a series of regular dancefloor bangers that are starting to reach classic status, finds the pair creating 12 original tracks that pare back the bombast in favour of quietly-epic tightly-arranged dance music in the vein of Orbital updated for the 21st century.

4.

Hundred Waters – Communicating

No-one quite brings together acoustic sensibilities with electronic arrangements in as a delicate manner as Hundred Waters and their third album feels like they’ve scooped out the inside of a valley and cocooned themselves and their music into the landscape as the aura borealis shimmers above. I’m still in discovery mode with the album but there’s comfort in their music for sure.

5.

Nosaj Thing – Parallels

The fourth album from LA electronic producer Jason Chung is his most cohesive album thus far. Having provided beats for Chance The Rapper, Kid Cudi and Kendrick over the years, it’s great to hear Chung’s imaginative productions working so well with guest vocalists from Blonde Redhead and Steve Spacek adding focus to these ambient-infused electronic tracks.

6.

Indian Wells – Where The World Ends

Another career best, this time from Italian producer Pietro Iannuzzi on the LA Friends of Friends label. As is that label’s hallmark, this is considered and full-realised electronic music concerned less with sample ingenuity but with isolation and the borders that govern our globe informed by Iannuzzi’s existence near the Italian mountains. As such, the album has moments of glowing vistas and awe in its running time that stands on its own.

Ticket giveaways:

How to enter ticket comp – Email [email protected] with the gig above in the Subject line you’re entering for along with your full name and phone number in the body of the message. Full info on each show below. Draw closes at 6pm the day before the gig or Friday 1pm latest for weekend gigs.

A roundup of 14 tracks not previously featured here that have been getting the new music veins pumping in the last seven days. These tracks are the besttracks not already featured on the site in the last week that popped up on my radar and left an impression in the last week or have appeared elsewhere. The Best New Music Weekly playlist will be posted every Wednesday.

A collection of music videos of interest which arrived in the last few days..

Tanlines – ‘Not The Same’ Tanlines’ new one for ‘Not The Same’ has the pair playing every instrument live that they played on the recording of the song that featured on Mixed Emotions. Of course, the only way to do that is to clone yourself:(more…)

Last week, Forward/Slash announced that Nosaj Thing would finally be coming to Dublin. Now we have a brand new track, from his first release since 2009’s Drift album. ‘Eclipse/Blue’ featuring smokey vocals from Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino is a swirling downbeat track featuring some earthed guitar anchoring the track’s somewhat celestial sounds. It’s out on 10″ on Innovative Leisure with the album coming in 2013.

Forward/Slash is a weekly free night of electronic-leaning music that took place in The Bernard Shaw, Dublin up until recently. It’s now moving to the Twisted Pepper on Thursdays and with it a more expansive lineup and a couple of international guests, one in particular, Nosaj Thing, I’ve been dying to see in Ireland since I saw him at SXSW twice.

It all kicks off again on October 18th with Bantum and proceeding weeks include Laurel Halo, Nosaj Thing on November 8th with White Collar Boy, Eatenbybears, Nanu Nanu, Spies, Clu, Tara Masterson Hally and more lined up.

Friday at SXSW traditionally starts with the Irish Breakfast, an all-day event where most of the Irish bands at the festival play. It’s held in BD Riley’s an Irish pub seemingly transported across the ocean in pristine condition. There was only time for catching a handful of the acts: James Vincent McMorrow impressed everyone it seems at every show he did (that was a lot), Halves were their usual awesome selves, Funeral Suits have improved their brand of spiky electro rock since the last time out and Adebisi Shank brought the madness which featured red-masked Vinny defenestrating himself out the window onto 6th Street. Here’s how the rest of Friday’s key acts for me went down.

Either these two are seriously underrated in the U.S. or people really didn’t know this was on, but this 1am club show just off 6th Street was oddly under attended. That was everyone else’s loss as these guys of are two of the best electronic producers DJs going.

Nosaj Thing kicked things off with a glitchy knob-fixated (excuse me) set that was every bit as good as his set at SXSW two years ago. His live set took went from glitch to hip-hop to G-funk with a Burial remix along the way.

Jamie xx’s DJ set was much more straightforward but like all good DJ sets, it was full of great tunes that you just want to keep dancing to. In the mix was his ‘Far Nearer’ tune that goes heavy on the steel pan, some Biggie, David Holmes, Letherette’s ‘Blad’, Luke Vibert’s Jamie Lidell remix and the only blight on the night, some ill-advised drum & bass. He finished out with what I can only presume was a new Jamie xx remix of Adele’s ‘He Won’t Go’ lest my ears deceived me. Much more understated than his ‘Rolling In The Deep’ one if so.

I’m not sure what’s going on here at all but it’s fairly abstract and visually nice. Directed by Roland Von Tessin. Nosaj Thing’s 2009 album is recommended. Meanwhile, DJ Bassmeister has mashed up Nosaj’s album with Nas. Listen after the jump via Hypetrak. (more…)

One of the better albums I’ve heard in recent months is Galaxy of Nowhere from Mondkopf. Part of the Fluokids family, Mondkopf is a 23 year-oldToulouse-born Parisian-based producer whose sound is a mix of the big beat drops of Modeselektor with the emotional synths of M83/Apparat with the electronic melodies of Nosaj Thing. He has remixed the likes of The Golden Filter, The Teenagers, and most recently, Caribou. Galaxy of Nowhere is the most engaging thoroughbred electronic album I’ve heard so far this year.

Here’s an exclusive cut which doesn’t appear on the album as well as ‘Libera Me’, a Galaxy of Nowhere standout. [Buy from Rough Trade | Amazon | eMusic]

Thankfully, this We Are The World have NOTHING to do with this. ‘Clay Stones’ is the first single in IAMSOUND’s The LA Collection is a series of limited edition split 7-inch vinyl singles. This first release from dance music’s beekeeper lookalikes We Are The World is not a split but expect further releases in the series to include the likes of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Moonrats, Fool’s Gold, Local Natives, Dead Man’s Bones, Rainbow Arabia, Nosaj Thing, IO Echo, Pocahaunted, Signals (ex-Mae Shi), Actually and Imaad Wasif. Sounds awesome.

The live show for Nosaj Thing designed by Adam Guzman & Julia Tsao. Video clips are the formatted for mixing in Modul8. Each clip belongs to a certain part of a song. We triggered and manipulated each clip live with 2 midi controllers.